Trouble, Thy Name is Rupert
by Alim Siemanym
Summary: AU. Harry becomes aware of magic early and has a little fun. Rupert, the fire demon, and Joe, the headless chicken, help.


**Trouble, Thy Name is Rupert** by **Alim Siemanym**

**A/N: _I own it not, except for Rupert. He be mine. Not yours. _**  
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**» § «**

Harry Potter was in trouble.

Again.

He was in trouble more often than not, come to think of it. Not the usual "the Dursleys hate me and make me do all the chores" type of trouble, but the honest-to-god oh-my-god-he-did-_what?_ type of trouble.

Things happened around Harry, things that just weren't normal. There were the usual run-of-the-mill type abonormalities, like the day his teacher's hair turned green and the day he apparated to the school roof. But then there were the not so usual things.

Like the time all the desks in his classroom turned into squealing pink pigs and wrecked havoc throughout the school. Or the time that it started snowing in the school gym. Or the time that the chalk seemed to gain a life of its own and began writing impolite phrases on the board (though that really was more run-of-the-mill type... until it grew teeth and started biting everybody who tried to control it, and until it grew wings and started writing in hard-to-erase places.)

As more and more of these things happened, Harry noticed that he seemed to be getting into more and more trouble. Especially at home. Uncle Vernon had taken to beating him with this awful torture instrument he called a "Smelting stick" and throwing him into the cupboard with less and less food. He had also taken to calling him a "freak", which got Harry thinking -- what if _he_ were the cause of all of these strange happenings?

That day, five girls ran down the hall screaming about pink monkeys in the loo, a disembodied hand tap-danced across the blackboard, and Ulysses Keelor's history text took to spouting random facts about the war with the colonies in a cockney accent.

That night, Harry went to sleep.

But he went to sleep knowing that he had a great power, a great ability, to change the world around him.

He decided to call it _magic_.

**» § «**

It was around this time that they closed the school due to the total hysteria surrounding the strange happenings (and the fact that tabloid reporters and psychics had staked out the school and were harassing its occupants). Fed up with the whole thing, the Dursley family went on vacation. Just two days, mind you, not long enough to send Harry to Mrs Figg. They just locked him in Dudley's spare bedroom with two jugs of water, a loaf of bread, and a bucket.

As the car pulled out of the drive and disappeared down the street, Harry took a look around his room and decided that it was time for a change. A very big change.

So he willed the door to unlock itself -- which it did happily -- and ambled downstairs to the kitchen. Once there he made a list of all the things he was going to do with his new-found freedom. After an hour and seven sheets of paper, Harry glanced over it all and decided to go back and put stars next to the really important things.

The first thing he did was wish really really hard that Dudley, Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and their stupid car were on some tropical island.

Perhaps it worked. Perhaps it didn't. But the world went black around Harry and he didn't remember anything else.

**» § «**  
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**When he woke up, his knees were hurting, his back was hurting, the was a rather large puddle of drool under his head, and he was laying on his stomach on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. With a grunt, he lurched to his feet before collapsing into a kitchen chair, head pounding. He blinked once, twince, and then wondered why it was so dark in the kitchen. Glancing outside, he realized why -- it was pitch dark. Nighttime.

Harry stumbled to the front door and opened it, staring out into the darkness. "Musta worked," he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes and wishing his headache would go away (which it did -- quite suddenly, too). "I feel like dirt."

He glanced out into the darkness once more and froze. There, on the front lawn, illuminated by the sickly yellow glow of the street light, was a neat pile of newspapers. Gathering them in his arms, he ran back inside, kicked the door shut, and dumped the papers on the kitchen table. There were four of them. Four. And only one of them had the date that Harry thought of as "today's date."

The implications of this took a while to sink in. "It's been four days," he muttered. "Four days I've been asleep. Damn."

He stood there and looked at the newspapers for a while, trying to think of what to do. Then a wicked thought came to him. He thought of his relatives, imagining them enjoying themselves on the beach, and concentrated on changing their minds about coming back. The little Vernon-image in his head turned to the Petunia-image and said, "Petunia, dear, this is so wonderful -- why don't we stay here for the rest of our lives?" The Petunia-image squealed and hugged him, repeating over and over "Yes, yes,yes." Dudley-image turned to his parents and said, "What about Potter?" And Vernon-image said, "Here we won't have to worry about the little freak. You don't _have_ a cousin, Dudley."

This time he didn't lose consciousness, though he did get incredibly dizzy and sat down hard on the linoleum floor. Unfortunately, he sat right back down in the puddle of drool from earlier, but he didn't really mind. He was not going to have to worry about Vernon, Petunia, or Dudley ever again.

**» § «**

Harry spent the next two days doing all the things he had never been allowed to do while the Dursleys were home. He watched TV, including some of the rather interesting ones that came on late at night, ate junk food, played with Dudley's toys, and stayed up as late as he wanted to.

On the third day, he came downstairs, saw the mess that he had made the previous days, and said out loud, "If I'm going to be a grown-up and live by myself, I'm going to act like a grown-up."

That day he cleaned the house, mowed the lawn, weeded the garden, and bought groceries.

He decided that he rather liked being a grown up -- it was fun and life was much better than when the Dursleys were around. Even when the school called his house and told him that they were reopenning on Monday he didn't mind; after all, learning is good -- he might even learn how to do some more interesting stuff.

It was on Monday afternoon, however, that he met Rupert.


End file.
